Thanks Tony. I guess no one else has an opinion?
Anyway I'm still torn, because Rick is also making me a twist-core jian, but my feeling is with his schedule it is at least a year or two away. So then the question becomes do I save the gold fittings for this future blade or use them now for the one I have?
Also, I have another set of the same open-work fittings that were already gold plated, but I am missing the throat piece for the scabbard and one of the scabbard hangers, as they were stolen at a Japanese sword show when I brought them to show a person how I wanted my brass set to be gold plated like the ones that were stolen from me. I was given a gold plated scabbard mount that could be made into a hanger, but I'm still missing the throat piece. If I ever complete that set I can either have them gold-plated or just remove all the gold and leave them brass colored, though it seems to be a waste of gold plating even though one of the hangers and the throat piece if I ever find a single will not match the color of the other gold plated fittings.
Tony Mosen wrote,
I always liked the Royal Poeny fittings but in my opinion those gold plated open work ones you have there are going to look real slick with a nice beefy handle wrap right up to the guard paired up with a nice dark red rosewood scabbard or the like.
They look chunky too, i've never seen the Royal Poeny fittings up close but it's good to have solid guard fittings, if Rick made a Tunkou (brass collor) for the blade and you had it Nickel plated to match the Meteorite textures in the blade. That would set it off nicely seeing as the guard is quite stout.
Rick did not make a Tunkou for the jian, as I had not asked him to. For the scabbard I was thinking some type of dyed ray-skin, red, green or black, with a matching ray-skin handle or perhaps a more historic(?) contrasting white ray-skin handle, with or without the handle wrap you suggested in a blue or gold color?
I wish I could find a photo of the original jian the open-work fittings were copied from to see what the historical version looked like.